Another Major, Same Disappointing Story for Andy Roddick

NEW YORK -- The disturbing thing was the way Andy Roddick was clinging to the stats, what he called his cheat sheet. It was just a few minutes after his second round match at the U.S. Open late Wednesday night, and he said the stats showed that he had stuck well to the gameplan.

Keep unforced errors down. Check. Make his opponent go for winners from tough positions. Check. Get a high percentage of serve returns in. Check.

His point was that to beat him, Janko Tipsarevic had to play great.

I mean, really, who cares? Sticking to the gameplan is no validation. Tipsarevic played great; Roddick got his return of serve in. Fair trade? Roddick lost 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4).

"I'll sleep a lot better than I did at Wimbledon, which basically, I thought, felt like I hand-fed someone a win,'' he said. "Tonight, I felt like the guy earned it.''

Let me go back to what I said a minute ago: Who cares?

Another Roddick loss in a major. Another explanation. My only regret is that he reminded me of that Wimbledon disaster, when he couldn't close out the fifth set against some guy named Yen-Hsun Lu.

---

---

There is no need to rip away at Roddick now. He has become too easy of a target. His chances to win a major in his career were done after Wimbledon in July.

He's only 28, and can still be himself for a few more years. That surely will include one more run deep into a major.

But the search for reasons after each loss has become a joke. Roddick doesn't win majors because he doesn't know how. That's all.

He has the great serve. He fixed his backhand, lost weight.

But this is about something other than those things, other than stats.

It's about know-how.

"I (have) followed his matches in the past,'' Tipsarevic said. "Normally, he starts off too defensive, and then when he sees that things are not going his way, he starts playing aggressive. That's when he's really dangerous.

"People say that he was much more dangerous when he was young because he was really going for the forehand every chance that he had. Now, I just don't see that. He's a kind of player that you need to beat.''

In majors, everyone does.

But can Roddick win another major?

"Definitely he needs to change something to win another grand slam,'' Tipsarevic said. "He needs to be more aggressive, but yes, I think he can.''

It's not going to happen. Roddick can hit all the shots, but something about the real champions makes them hit those shots at the biggest times.

Whatever that is, that's what Roddick is missing.

Meanwhile, the mojo is now completely gone from his classic 2009 Wimbledon loss to Roger Federer. That one was about the re-invention of his game, the commitment to make the most of himself.

He still deserves credit for his changes. But the ingredient that's missing is the magic that makes someone special.

Roddick said he didn't think Tipsarevic could keep up his great play forever, that it must have "an expiration date.''

So he stuck to the plan, stuck to the plan, waited, waited, waited.

And then he expired.

Each time Roddick loses in a major now, for some reason I feel the need to give a career retrospective. It's like an obituary for his career, I guess.

He served for years as the face of American tennis, won one major, reached No. 1 briefly. He spent most of his career with rocks in his head, bashing serves and forehands and not bothering to develop much else, then, he made the changes. He spent years in the top 10.

There, I got that out of me.

This has to be killing him. I wonder how much longer he'll stick with it. He nearly quit at the end of 2008, thinking his chances to win another major were about done. Then he made the changes with the main purpose of winning one more biggie.

It won't happen. But the life of a rich, famous guy married to a swimsuit model could be worse.

It just seems that he isn't going to improve anymore, that it's a matter of riding out his big serve for as long as it's enjoyable to him.

This has to have been one of his roughest years. The hope was to build on last year's Wimbledon, and he did so by beating Rafael Nadal in a Masters level event in the spring.

Then, he got sick, though, and recently found out he had been playing with mono. That explained his lack of energy this summer, he said. Apparently he's over it now.

A few people kept asking him if the mono explained his lethargy early in the match Wednesday night. Roddick said he wouldn't be talking about mono if he had won, so he wasn't going to talk about it just because he lost.

It was a good attitude. No one likes excuses.

But the problem wasn't mono. It was Roddick. He did exactly what Tipsarevic expected.

Roddick said that Tipsarevic played great, but tennis isn't a one-way thing. It's Roddick's job to keep him from playing great, to find a way through a match like that.

That requires changes, throwing away the cheat sheet. He couldn't do it at Wimbledon. He couldn't do it Wednesday night.

And what does that leave? For Roddick, it leaves 2011, and the same story.

E-mail me at gregcouch09@aol. Follow me on Twitter @gregcouch